If you never thought something as small as a paint chip could have the potential to destroy the International Space Station, think again. Traveling at speeds upwards of 17,500 mph, the ISS could be torn apart by debris smaller than a marble in an instant. NASA is currently tracking more than 500,000 objects orbiting Earth including non-operational satellites and obsolete disengagements from past rocket missions. But the greatest risk to active satellites and space missions comes from the millions of pieces of debris that are nearly impossible to track.
An article from 12 May 2016 in the Washington Post reported the International Space Station’s recent collision with “something as unassuming as a flake of paint or a metal fragment just a few thousandths of a millimeter across.”
The fragment left a 7-millimeter chip in a window of the European-built Cupola module. ESA astronaut Tim Peake was the first to snap a picture of the damage, then shared it with the world on his twitter account.
So how might we deal with all this hazardous space material? Lasers!
Authors of Laser-based removal of irregularly shaped space debris, Stefan Scharring, Jascha Wilken, and Hans-Albert Eckel of the German Aerospace Center discuss a new method in applying laser-induced damage principles to clean up space junk, where the use of high-energy laser pulses modify the orbit of debris causing it to burn up in the atmosphere.
The greatest improvement from previous studies in laser-based removal of debris is the ability to target irregularly-shaped objects – a characteristic shared by most space material.
To get a better picture of how much debris we’re working with, watch this short video simulating the increasing amount of space junk that has accumulated over the years in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Claude Phipps of Photonic Associates, LLC and his colleagues have been researching laser orbital debris removal (LODR) for over 15 years and have concluded that it is a very promising technique. Laser technology is improving at an astounding rate and is proving to be the most cost-efficient solution to space junk clean up.
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7 mm chip on ISS
window caused by a small
fragment of space debris no larger than
a few microns
across
|
An article from 12 May 2016 in the Washington Post reported the International Space Station’s recent collision with “something as unassuming as a flake of paint or a metal fragment just a few thousandths of a millimeter across.”
The fragment left a 7-millimeter chip in a window of the European-built Cupola module. ESA astronaut Tim Peake was the first to snap a picture of the damage, then shared it with the world on his twitter account.
So how might we deal with all this hazardous space material? Lasers!
Authors of Laser-based removal of irregularly shaped space debris, Stefan Scharring, Jascha Wilken, and Hans-Albert Eckel of the German Aerospace Center discuss a new method in applying laser-induced damage principles to clean up space junk, where the use of high-energy laser pulses modify the orbit of debris causing it to burn up in the atmosphere.
The greatest improvement from previous studies in laser-based removal of debris is the ability to target irregularly-shaped objects – a characteristic shared by most space material.
To get a better picture of how much debris we’re working with, watch this short video simulating the increasing amount of space junk that has accumulated over the years in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Claude Phipps of Photonic Associates, LLC and his colleagues have been researching laser orbital debris removal (LODR) for over 15 years and have concluded that it is a very promising technique. Laser technology is improving at an astounding rate and is proving to be the most cost-efficient solution to space junk clean up.
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